PONDERING

Joel Weishaus

Around 300 million years ago our ancestor Tiktaalik roseae emerged from primeval waters, slithered across muddy earth, and began an evolution toward a world in which "humanity poetically dwells."(2) (There are now nearly 400 species of air breathing fish.) Around 50,000 years ago, our ancestors drew images and blew colors onto subterranean walls flickering with shadows, and on terranean rocks above, recreating animals they knew, or imagined, as symbols and signs, adding handprints as signatures of I Was Here.(3) Around 2,500 years ago our ancestors thought deeply and came up with Philosophy: the love of wisdom. To which restless human minds added mathematics, ethics, theology, science, etc. However, a few pre-Socratic philosophers were poets, whose "bright tatters of wisdom cast / over gray welter and spume should at any rate yield / a few visions and reflections."(4) Among the Greek gods was Orpheus, whose singing head floated down the River Hebrus to Lesbos, the island of poets, where he established his oracle. Here the hierophant sings our future, while the god remains silent. Two famous ponds in Literary History are Henry Thoreau's Walden Pond, and Matsuo Basho's "Old pond / frog leaps in / plop!"(5) While Thoreau's pond has become a tourist destination, Basho's pond remains a "timeless endless pond."(6) Standing by the pond, tall oak trees shade a ring of flowers nurturing their fragrance as motor vehicles driving children to a questionable education foul the clear morning air. Across the street a young couple strolls past holding hands, while their dog is sniffing a world into its sensitive nose.   1. Matthew Johnson, Senior Planner / Community Development. City of Forest Grove OR. 2. Martin Heidegger quoting Friedrich Hölderlin. 3. Alison George, "The Cave Art Conundrum." New Scientist, Volume 251, Issue 3345, July 2021. 4. Robert Bringhurst. From, "Herakleitos." 5. Furu ike ya / kawazu tobikomu / mizo no oto 6. Robert Aitken, A Zen Wave. New York: Weatherhill, 1996. p.26. Note: Designed to be viewed on a 10" or larger screen.     TITLES / NOTES (LINKS)   On A Cold Autumn Dawning Sweet Scent Of Autumn Shadows On A Parallel Road To The River When Earth Was Young From A Secluded Lake Unlike Walden And Its Famous Hermit This Old Pond Dreams It's Dancing Like A Pond That Can't Be As The Sun Rises The Shadows The Pond Stretches Into The Night Even Though It Knows Quacking In His Scarlet Cap And Gossamer Grass Wears The Crystals Every Pond Has Dreamed When We Walked On The Shards Scanning Water Trudging Through A Dense Fog Slips Over The Pond The Pond Flows In Around And Out On The Mountain's Lips A God When We Find That In The Beginning In His Amsterdam Studio Rembrandt What Have You Birthed A Second Time The Mountain Lifts As Memory In The Morning’s Sward Gray Sky Wingless Flight Rising In Starlight As His Singing Head Floated Down Some Walls Of Paleolithic Caves A Slice Of Sunshine Slides Its Way Entering Again A Cavernous Mind Black Clouds Of An Ancient Dawning When Orpheus Sang His Song Of Creation   NOTES   . © Joel Weishaus 2026.